Know intense and I just thought to myself wow you know I tried so hard to do everything right I tried to plan for everything I tried to you know be a good student be a good daughter be a good sister be a good friend and it wasn’t
Enough and at the time that’s how I felt like it kind of feels like something like I did went wrong when really you know it’s not anything I could have controlled business is business take it back to the basics multi-million cash the feelings amazing got a por inside my stable don’t
Hor me baby 20 plus in my field I’m like Co with the Lakers it’s like I’m toing the spr doing these road trips three days close for more M I stay on it when you step on the premise just know I own this collaborate inside of my district is for the
Owners doing the pun is the true 101 how up business you just my what’s going on everybody I’m back with another episode of the collab District podcast I got another young lady entrepreneur in the building Miss Kavita ra she is the owner of ethos the new trending mobile drinking app that we’ll
Speak about but she also has an incredible journey that we’ll share as well welcome to the show kavid hi thank you so much for having me so I like I said I do these um episodes and hopes to inspire people and also share other entrepreneurs um journey and stories in
The community and hopes to inspire someone else um so tell our audience a little bit about your background where you’re from you know your heritage and where you grew up and kind of like how that shaped who you are today as a young entrepreneur yeah for sure so I’m born
And raised in Camaro California my parents both immigrated here from India um my mom immigrated here when she was 3 years old and she moved to Stockton California eventually made her way to Venta County my dad was born in India uh actually lived in Kenya for majority of
His childhood then went to England and then came here um and they both you know became Pharmacists and um have pharmacies all over Ventura County and so um you know seeing them start businesses obviously inspired my brother and I to one understand what hard work looks like and two what it’s like to
Actually create an entity create a life for yourself and so I think I’ve always been surrounded by hard work and that has played such a huge role sorry has and that has played such a huge role um in you know where I feel like I’m at
Right now in my life that’s awesome I’ve also had you know family members and business and when you have people close to you especially love ones and you can watch them and it becomes obtainable to you right like I feel like there’s so many times where um owning a business
Seems so far-fetched for people but you know when you have entrepreneurship inside your household or close around you becomes attainable did that you you talked about how that sparked you so do you feel that that’s what contributed to you you know just having that entrepreneur Spirit did you help out
With any other pharmacies you know did they did they put you in part of the business so you can kind of learn responsibility maybe not necessarily the pharmaceutical world but just responsibility at a young age yeah I I grew up in like the back room of thees
You know where you know they didn’t couldn’t get a babysitter so it’s like okay just stay in the back and you learn you you learn from the environment you help out I I wouldn’t say I grew up knowing I wanted to start a business I think I had an entrepreneurial spirit
And I think that came from being very observant as a kid and understanding people’s needs and you know when you understand people’s needs you pretty much kind of already are in the problem solving space right so um I think that’s really what just was such a spark for me was really enjoying making
A difference in other people’s lives whether it was in school figuring out okay this is maybe what a teacher’s need is like let me see how I can like like let me see what I can do and then how how can I problem solve to make the whole experience for the classroom better
Youing at a community scale and now what we’re kind integrating technology with ethos and how you can leverage that to um help a community help a certain patient population in need and so I think that’s really what was instilled in me um and again it was you know be
Whether it was being in the pharmacy like during summer um or seeing my parent parents come home you know go to work at 8:00 a.m. come home at 7:00 p.m. and you just see what it takes to you know have a business um and to run a
Business um you know they afforded my brother and I a really comfortable living where you know we were able to then see how can we maximize our opportunity things that we were given to add onto what our parents have already built for us um and really laid the
Foundation for the ways in which we could accelerate and your mom and dad are they a team do they work together and is that where you and your brother get that from um you know watching your parents you know work as a team because I’m sure it wasn’t always you know
Clouds and rainbows right I’m sure there were some things that happened and transferred at home and vice versa and and I see you know I’ve had the opportunity to speak to you and your brother um you guys work it seems like you guys feed off each other work well
At each other did you get that from watching watchingg your parents as well yeah so I mean I that’s honestly the basis of like the way I grew up was you know they were they came home they worked together and then we were a family unit and so it totally I think it
Influenced the way I I I saw I guess oh to back up I never thought that I would be working with my brother if I’m going to be like really honest growing up right growing up we were Polar Opposites where if you knew us people would kind of see us as foils you
Know but in not not in a bad way it was just two different people and you know of course growing up we’re only three years apart so we would butt heads who’s older he’s older he’s older okay yeah three years I like that you um but it’s interesting because you
Know the weaknesses that I have and the weaknesses maybe that he has we have strengths that compliment mhm each other’s weaknesses and so in a business setting we really work well together because I think you need to have two different Dynamic roles you know I feel like I’m definitely more of the cautious
Meticulous maybe slightly perfectionist one and he’s like we just have to keep on building put it out there building put it out there and iterate he’s a risk taker and so he’s taught me so much about how to really not care about what other people think and just go for it go
For it um and I think the earlier you can learn that just the easier opportunities of course it’s going to be a really hard road but the easier it is to feel like you can obtain those opportunities because it becomes less and less hard to take that um risk or
That mindset shift to feel like you can take that risk and so although I wouldn’t if you asked me this question even like two years ago I I would be like what we’re working together but you know I think that it’s only made us stronger and I think um you know we’ve
Definitely seen the pros and cons of being a family and working together it can be really stressful but also I think we’ve learned the good things and the bad things that maybe are um mom and dad taught us and saying okay hey this is how we want to approach it and you know
We’re siblings first we have a relationship first that we want to prioritize um that goes beyond business goes beyond working together and I think when prioritize that then you have that basic level of respect also in a business you’re able to keep be really real with each other too where you don’t
Have to tiptoe yeah and I think also when you’re looking at Partners like you don’t have to really grow that trust Factor right you guys have that through growing up you guys trust each other so you know if someone has to make a call or a final decision you you know that
Trust factor is there you know because um everyone’s not a good partner you know people can be great entrepreneurs but you know it takes a different um type entrepreneur to also be a partner and and play a role so I commend you both for that um you you talked about
Growing up in Camaro attending Newberry Park High School and then on to college at University of Southern California um how important was education to to you and you know and how has that played a role into your um career today where you were overachiever in high school and
Like in the ASB uh student class president or were you more of a social um type in in school yeah um so yeah I graduated from Newbury Park High School and I definitely was the overachiever like classic overachiever I think education from a young age was instilled in me that you
Know it’s very important to work hard do well in school um because an education can unlock so many opportunities the same way you know it did for my mom and dad and so so that I always knew was super important to me but as I kind of mentioned seeing my parents always work
I think hard work translated into me constantly being this perfectionist and overachiever where you know I was involved in like seven different clubs I had you know wanted to get the highest GPA I always knew USC was the school I wanted to go to okay and that was my
Goal and when I got in it was like Wow of course there were so many variables that allowed me to get an education at us C but it really showed me hey if I I have this drive if I work hard I can always keep moving this goal poost and I
Think it really showed me like I was a very ambitious person I wasn’t afraid of that but I think when you’re constantly moving the goal post you also have to be really intentional about what drives you and I think when I was 18 years old I
Didn’t know what was driving me I didn’t know a lot I just knew that I I like being ambitious and so I think when I got to college it was just this it it struck me that you know there’s so many opportunities there’s so many people I
Also felt this immense pressure that I I put on myself of I have this amazing opportunity for an educational experience that you know my parents dreamt of I don’t want to mess this up and so I think a lot of you know and I think this comes from a lot of daughter
Of immigrants children of immigrants where it feels like you want to um you know make your parents proud and you maybe feel even a little guilty like survivors remorse guilt yeah of having these opportunities that they didn’t have and wanting to just make like make
The most of it and I think I definitely saw within the first few months that was really burdening me where I wasn’t even experiencing you know I had this fiveyear plan okay where I I made this Five-Year Plan um going into USC called my guide to USC colorcoded all the
Different things I needed to yep all the different things I wanted to do the clubs the classes I was so interested in different things that I think it maybe overwhelmed me where I was like I need to like figure out how to put it in a
Lane because I don’t think I I don’t think it I really knew how to deal with having different interests because I was so focused on the outcome and I didn’t know how I was going to get an achievement yeah so that was my perspective at 18 years old which
Obviously has changed now but it’s it’s been a long road to actually kind of fix that mindset and unlearn a lot of things yeah why um you talked about you you knew at an early age USC like why USC I had the opportunity to take some
Business courses at USC and it was one of the it helped my career you know it wasn’t necessarily college but had the opportunity to take um you know like this young emerging leaders courses that were at USC and like you it helped me you know um like being on campus just
Did something to you and then um just the curriculum that I got and what I was able to learn um was it so impactful for my business to where it taught me how to scale from a small construction company into you know the next level of like scaling up and actually planning for
That and yeah I didn’t really necessarily have the education to do that you know I knew I had the ambition like you but I actually didn’t have the education until then to like write it in a plan and you know and it not just goal setting but how and meticulously how
It’s going to reach those goals so like how you know what about USC at an early age made you want to go to there you know that’s in the middle of the hood I mean so I have a really funny story of how I got introduced to us I always knew
It was school right you grow up in Venta County you know the schools in Southern California um it was when my brother was applying to colleges he didn’t want to like visit the school and my parents were like okay well we already signed up for a tour you’re going to go and
Pretend to be him because we already signed up for the tour you know so it’s paid for us we got to do this and so I was the person and at this time I was like a freshman in high school so I pretended to be my
Brother I don’t know why that I felt like the need to I think my parents were honestly just messing with me um but I visited the school and I just was in awe of like the energy on campus it’s a beautiful campus but every respective School whether it’s journalism
Engineering the film School the business school was such a standalone like it was such a like accomplished school um in a well-known school that I loved the fact that they were they were just leaders in every single industry because as a young person I wanted to see like I I want to
Try a little bit of everything like I want to take a journalism class I want to take a business class and what I loved is that it was super interdisciplinary where I got to work with students from different majors and just work on projects that we were passionate about whether it was making
Like a documentary my sophomore year or working on a different Health Tech startup for um a humanitarian crisis in Ukraine like that was one of the classes that I took and so there was just so many opportunities and so many students who were just genuinely so passionate
About what they were studying with I knew being in an environment like that if I even if I didn’t know at that moment what I wanted to do I knew I would be able to experience so much and so that’s really what drew me um to the
School and it just everyone was so kind so supportive they really Market the Trojan family well but I can say now as an Alum like it really is true and so much of the early calls we had with ethos were with USC alumni or with people connections that I got through
USC you know USC is a school known for its Network and that really stays true yeah I was going to ask you about that you talked about joining all T different clubs and you kind of dove in head first and you wanted to experience a little
Bit of it all but once you’ve tamed that down what clubs did you join and you know what kind of relationships came from college right because we have our friends from childhood that we grew up with but then I hear about these stores I didn’t actually attend college but I
Have you know kids in college and you know I’ve talked to other entrepreneurs and there’s these bonds that are made in college that you know that last forever as well as networks that are um provided that go well beyond you know your your your student days you know when you turn
To a professional you have a Rolodex of professionals that you can reach into like you said you speaking to a lot of Alum on your on some of the early stages of your of your business so can you talk about some of those clubs that you joined in those networks and
Relationships that you have today yeah I think the biggest like most formative experience that I had at uh USC was joining their Student Government um I was really involved with USG and which is Universe like the student government at USC and it just exposed me again to
Going back to what I was talking about about how I just felt super connected to problem solving I was able to have my hands in so many different projects that Student Government alongside the administration was working on to solve for the student body and so I got to be
Instead of just you know maybe talking with my peers about okay what could this look like how could we make this experience better for students I actually got to be in the decision-making room with administrators and speak for students and so one of the biggest projects that I worked on was
Title 9 reform because there were a lot of fraternities who came out with you know a a lot of violations for sexual assault and gender-based violence and a lot of students on campus didn’t feel safe and there were actually huge protests for the course over the course
Of two weeks and this is right when I got appointed Student Government so it’s like okay first challenge you know and so for me it’s always really interesting when there’s friction between any two groups what does the mediator do and and you have to be really strategic um and
Also very empathetic to both sides to actually push something forward and I think I just enjoyed being in those spaces where I could make a difference um and you know I I worked on a lot of different mental health policies for students um and you know as you can
Imagine with a lot of what was going on at that time as well as Co um there was just a lack of resources for students who needed help and ultimately my experience at in student government is what informed me to want to work on ethos okay um because you know I saw
That not only the work that I did in Title 9 and how alcohol is a contributing factor to gender based vience to all these other issues that we see but I also saw the Mental Health crisis so many students were going through um and using substances you know
As a as a form to cope and it’s just normalized like I did it my friends did it it was reinforced and you know for so many reasons I realized you know this has to kind of change yeah that that’s amazing work um you hear about that you
Know it’s one of my you know my fears you know sexual based you know crimes on campus you hear it all the time you know especially having kids in college but um that’s amazing did you guys make any big Headway and change at the University or just at the least but started the
Conversation on a broad range correct yeah we started the conversation we were able to do a few different cool initiatives or important initiatives to help students so one of them being creating an intake unit within the reporting office so students you know God forbid they have to go and report an
Incident they have to do it manually on a website and so we really advocated to have a care advocate so somebody’s actually listening to you on the phone to guide you through the next steps and also take your case to the next you know level it needs to get to and I think
Again it just goes through there are so many ways you can have more empathetic touch points in bureaucratic systems and it’s something we think about too when we’re building a company that deals with a really difficult topic yes um but there are ways that you can make it
Easier for that person who is seeking care um to just you know like how can you make it easy for them and so that was one of the projects that I spearheaded that I was really proud of um as well as um just increasing the amount of counseling services for
Students um and making sure that students from all different backgrounds had access access to like culturally competent counselors instead of like just a universal like generic college counselor we really try to make sure how can we put people who understand a variety of different student experiences on campus and people who students would
Feel comfortable coming to um and so it all goes back to how can we really meet students where they’re at well that’s amazing um you’ve watched your parents also you know be being immigrants they’ve had to overcome a lot of ADV um to provide a life and start a
Business here in America Alone um and you’ve had to overcome your own adversity in your young Journey you were diagnosed with cancer um can you talk about you know the type of cancer that you had and you know how that’s also now played into who you are because I when I
Talked to you as soon as I met you there’s like a like great sense of gratitude you know I feel that type of energy coming from you and I’m sure you know we’re all are we are who we are today from all of our life experiences
From before so do you mind uh sharing about that yeah so I was diagnosed with Stage 2B Hotchkins Lymphoma which is a type of blood cancer I was diagnosed at the end of my first semester of freshman year at USC um and the process of getting
Diagnosed uh I you know it is initially just I kind of felt like this lump in my throat every time I would take vitamins I was like I don’t know what this is you know it’s hard for me to like swallow these vitamins like you know seems abnormal and you know the initial
Response that I got from a lot of provide like my primary care doctor um my pediatrician at the time because I was barely 18 and my parents was like you know don’t worry it’s just stress like you’re going through midterms like it’s going to like pass over and I don’t
To this day I don’t know what it was call it intuition divine intervention I was like no I need to get this checked out and you know this is something that I probably wouldn’t have done like because I’m just again you know you grow up and you’re like okay I
Saw my parents just like push through adversity okay like you know it’s fine like keep keep working you know it’s it’s nothing yeah this two Shall Pass right yeah exactly and so I was like okay maybe it whatever but for some reason reason I decided to go I booked
An appointment with the student health clinic and she basically told me hey you need to get a CT scan stat I think there’s something else going on and it was at that point where you know my friends and family and my pediatrician at the time was like okay yeah like
Let’s let’s go let’s run some tests to see what this is but you know their perspective still at the time was I don’t know why this person’s scaring you sure it’s nothing and so it was a lot of learning how to actually advocate for myself to figure out what was going on
Body you had to be your own voice right it’s yeah and I think what’s really scary is like I was scared to figure that out I didn’t want to know but nobody else was going to do that for me wow and so I had to you know say hey
Like I want to get this test done I had to learn how to ask the right questions in a doctor’s room and you know my parents being in the healthcare space they had a lot of knowledge on you know understanding you know certain type of tests I need or maybe like like really
Just helping me figure it out but so many people don’t have that so many people wouldn’t even think to call their pediatrician if they had an issue yeah Thro issue yeah I mean yeah and there and also like I just know and like the black community like it’s a stigma to
Even go to the doctor you know so and that’s a that’s a lot of minority communities because we’re fearful of the unknown and um healthc care is a is a is a big issue for another topic for another day but you know so what what
Other steps did you have to go were you going through to finally find out to get the diagnosis and what was the the process of you know recovering from that like not only the physical process but like that had to be very tough mentally right and there had to be some draining
Times where you just probably felt like you just wanted to give up you know um or maybe didn’t maybe you always stayed positive because I just had this conversation with with a friend that that has a family member that’s really sick and I you know we can get the best
Medical attention like um medicine has um Advanced so much yeah over the last few decades you know me being on the board at the hospital I see the medicine the technology that we have the robots and things like that but I think there’s also something to say about a person’s
Like inner resilience and like will will power and I believe like willpower is a muscle you know and it sound like you had already been training that muscle for the unknown um so can you just talk about also the resilience that you kind of had to have mentally you know and
Mental health because again sounds like at a time where it was right around covid so there’s just a lot going on yeah it it was actually right around covid and I think you know I remember getting diagnosed it took about a month for me to finally get diagnosed I was
Sitting at the Children’s Hospital so so think about like having your first taste of Independence at 18 years old going to college to then holding your mom’s hand at a children’s hospital not knowing the next steps it was you know intense and I just thought to myself wow you know I
Tried so hard to do everything right I tried to plan for everything I tried to you know be a good student be a good daughter be a good sister be a good friend and it wasn’t enough and at the time that’s how I felt like it kind of
Feels like as a patient or as as you know for me it felt like something like I did went wrong when really you know it’s not anything I could have controlled correct and I think I had to really get in touch with myself and I think prior to that I was constantly
Just doing things to have an ex external outcome some sort of validation and this really stripped all of that away I there was nothing you know I I could do it didn’t matter anymore those external things achievements all seem so minuscule at this point nothing matters
When you’re sick like nothing else is is of as as importance right we we stress so much about oh my gosh I didn’t study enough oh my gosh what does this person think of me oh my gosh I I don’t know what I I want to do with my life yeah
All those things even all those things you know yeah and it’s like oh my gosh I I don’t know what the next six months are going to entail I don’t know how my body is going to react to this and I think having to go through the physical
Pain every other so my my chemotherapy uh was on a regimen of I had to be at the infusion center about every two weeks and so there would be about like it would take me let’s say like three to four days to fully recover like to at least you know feel
Like I can do a few things for the remainder of the time until I had to go back and for my next dose okay um and I just remembered like having to be very in touch with my body because when you are in so much physical pain and also mental like
Stress you have to be in touch with your body and that’s what really forced me to do that I mean I think that I was I had this huge sense of fomo too I was like I’m supposed to be an 18-year-old Carefree girl you know I worked so hard
And I just wanted like that taste of Freedom you had your fiveyear plan I had my 5year plan this was not in the plan I remember actually um sitting in the hospital bedroom and this was like the night I got diagnosed I couldn’t sleep obviously and I you know I had to
Get surgery in the morning um to get my port inserted which is how they you know that that’s how they plug in your medication um and I just remember like I was on my laptop and I was just crying I was like trying to fix the plan I was
Like oh my gosh how am I going to account for this you’re trying to fix the plan the same day that you found out that you got diagnosed yes wow and it was just that is how I think How Deeply ingrained wanting to have control over
Life was for me and I don’t know where cuz I think even to a certain extent my parents were a little shocked too you know and so I think it really comes from almost not wanting to obviously be in the that present moment because it’s so hard to comprehend so you’re like how
Can I plan for something else yeah especially 18 years old I mean come on yeah I didn’t I was so naive to life at that point really and I think something that really put things into perspective in addition to having to do things like you know like start to read more start to
Consume like whether it was podcasts or books or you know like poems literature things that could help me healh I think I also kind of you know looked at like my like family lineage of resilience so my on my dad’s side my grandmother um his mom died of cancer he has two
Sisters that died of cancer on my mom’s side her mom had cancer and luckily was a Survivor but to think about everything Generations before has had to go through to get you and your body here where it is today and then your body to take you
Where it needs to go at for my my case it was through this journey of chemotherapy and Recovery like how could I not be [ __ ] Greatful you know how could I not like why am I and I even think about it now it’s like so many things that on my day
To in my day-to-day that worry me MH it’s like what yeah yeah like like what yeah you know like it really taught me that like life is so precious for me to stay in the present mhm and I don’t need to plan even two steps ahead when I
Cherish what I have right now because I’m so grateful for just the feeling of being able to get up out of my bed and walk wow or you know the feeling of being able to grow out my hair and not watch my hair fall out wow you know
Those were just intense experiences at 18 years old where you know you didn’t really think about your health like that no I mean not at 18 you’re not thinking like that yeah and what about the you know I’m sure you had a undenying support in in in community because you
Know when you know when like said a family member gets sick you have you have to have your own resilience but you also have to have a community of people behind you to CU When You’re Not Strong they got to be strong for you right um
How did your F family friends other uh people you know uh survivors or people you know currently battling cancer did those that uh group of community come to your Aid and also Aid into your recovery yeah I mean I think that the Silver Lining is I’ve I never felt up until
That point more loved and lifted up from my friends and family who would constantly just FaceTime me just to keep me preoccupied you know I had friends who were in completely different lives at that point where you know they were enjoying College but you know would
Still pick up the phone if I needed it and I will say it was really isolating and so I also there was this part of me that was like I don’t know how much like they can really relate to what I’m going through like really relate really relate
You know and so I think I decided to really try to find Community online and I you know I remember you know one of the few days where I I had to stay in the hospital I just tried to find people on social media who had gone through
What I had gone through cuz I wanted to almost like see what did what did their evolution look like what what what’s really in store I had no idea to be honest when the doctor said I had Hotchkins Lymphoma I was like oh thank God he didn’t say cancer and then I
Realized it’s cancer so I I had no idea and so um I just wanted to I I saw so many young cancer patients you know go through therapy share their story online and you know now they’re like 2 3 years out they’ve recovered they’ve gone back
To life and I was like wow that’s you know really reassuring yeah and I think part of me found a lot of comfort and also sharing my story online and whenever I had these like quote unquote Milestones of like hey today I had to shave my head it became a lot less scary
Which maybe is kind of ironic cuz people find it really scary to put things out online I mean you had to get out of your car but I I was already out of my comfort zone so I was like you know what I I need the support and maybe there is
Somebody who is going through the same thing as me that I can find and that’s exactly what happened wow you know I found so many people who were going through cancer um and we would check in with each other and be like hey like how did your infusion go how how are your
Symptoms how are you doing like you know like talking about plans when this is all over right which is a completely different story of you know this concept of oh this is just a you know a a a a little obstacle in the road you know it’s not like that it completely Alters
The way you look at life the way you live life um but for that time it was really amazing to again create community and create that for myself um and to this day I still get people who you know DM me and say hey like I saw what you I
Saw what you went through like I’m I’m was just diagnosed a lot of what you just talked about really helped me wow and that to me is what touches me the most is because I I was once that person who was trying to seek that yeah that’s
That’s amazing um that’s one of the great things about um social media and uh on and online is that you can find a community it does make the world a little smaller to where you can connect with someone clearly across the country and like you said these are people now
That you’re communicating with that um know what you’re going through you guys are talking the same language you guys are going through the same treatments and things like that and you go through that you recover and you still somehow graduate from USC like explain like how did you persevere and and continue to
Push through that yeah I I I honestly think it’s taken me really up until very recently to comprehend the remainder of my college experience you know after going through cancer because it is an interesting experience to recover from cancer in an environment like college where so many young people are
Just so reckless about their health and it put me in an environment where I had to think twice about the situations I was putting in what I was put in especially when it comes to alcohol um because that was a huge risk factor for me for relapse and you know
There was also just this like almost I I it almost felt like I was almost out I already outgrew this experience of like being Carefree because it I just couldn’t I couldn’t feel Carefree anymore after going through that um and I think that you know on paper you look at my resume
Maybe or you see things that I’ve been able to do and it’s like wow you know she was able just to bounce right back but it wasn’t like that I mean if it goes I will say I think a lot of the Tendencies I had before cancer when it
Comes to just you know working through like just using work whether it’s through school whether it’s through actual work whether it’s through and keeping myself busy essentially to numb myself out and to not really think about my life consciously and so that’s really what it was it just felt like everything
Like I’m so tired of everything being uncertain around my health I’m just going to do what I think I’m expected to do and go from there like I’m just going to do that and so I don’t have to think about it I don’t have to worry about it
And then come my you know junior year when I was on this path to graduate go to grad school you know I was like you know what I don’t feel happy like I don’t feel like this is something I even feel called to do oh wow and at this at
Least at at that time and it it’s like the more you ignore your intuition the more you start to break this trust with yourself yeah you really you know it’s not something to ignore and so I was just I had such a hard hard or difficult relationship with
Myself where I didn’t know anything that I wanted because I spent so much time not listening to my body despite building this relationship during treatment uh with myself and and during covid with myself it’s just like you get back into an environment and it feels like your bubble is popped you know and
So I had to do a lot of really hard work to put myself in uncomfortable positions to figure out like what is it that I want and I say uncomfortable positions in the sense that I think I’ve always been ambitious and always wanted to take initiative in things that I knew I was
Good at and when you get to a certain point it’s like if th that’s not even fulfilling me anymore because I realize I’m so attached to certain outcomes or validation from it you have to put yourself in a situation to learn and discover and you’re not going to succeed
All the time you’re not going to succeed most of the time when you’re learning and so that was a huge thing for me to figure out and so that’s really where I decided I wanted to you know build on kind of the backbone of my entrepreneurial spirit and take this
Very humble journey of figuring out what type of skills do I need to learn right now and like how can I just like work really hard but work really hard to actually like be a sponge and ands absorb information learn from other people who have been successful in this
Field and just be very curious and try things without being so attached to the outcome yeah and that was really hard for like a recovering perfectionist for somebody who came from an immigrant family where it was like okay like like what’s you’re kind of expected of to
Have a linear Journey yeah um and I think that it was hard for my parents too to see me struggle cuz obviously they just want yeah you never want to see your kid exactly exactly and so I think I had to really you know say to
Myself if I don’t build this muscle to take risk to allow myself to learn it’s just going to get harder for me to do it and I’m also not going to put myself in a position where I’m ignoring my intuition because I felt really called
To just I didn’t know what I wanted to do but I knew I didn’t want to stay on this linear trajectory that you know maybe on paper would have been so much easier than what I’m doing now yeah um but I just really felt like at this
Moment what really sets me apart for my peers who maybe have more quote unquote experience in a certain field or more skills in a field we’re all young people who are about to enter the workforce or become young professionals like we’re still pretty much at a baseline you know yeah you’re
Still entering exactly entering your journey and I want to um pivot to that part is like you said you talked about you’re very results based and then you know you went through your adversities and you’ve become more present with the actual process and I’m the same way where you know I I enjoy
The the process to to get the results that I want and like we don’t always get the results and like you said those are times to learn and to grow uh when when you when you when you have failures can you talk about the process of creating
Ethos what ethos is and what inspired you you T you kind of talked about it being on Campus Life yeah but what inspired you to create something again around a topic like alcohol that really benefits a lot of people yeah so ethos is a digital Health Solution that helps individuals manage alcohol consumption
Before it reaches the stage of addiction and we work with universities and health system because that’s often times where the problem starts and where the problem gets lost and we work with them to help them detect you know issues when it comes to alcohol use disorder substance
Use disorder we help them detect that early on through leveraging the technology we’ve built and we help those individuals seek care in a more accessible destigmatized way and there are so many reasons why this felt like a calling to me I’ll start with one that I think really kind of joins the reason
Why I’m working on this with my brother so both of our parents are from Punjab India and the Punjabi uh sik community in you know America has unfortunately experienced so much of the ramifications of alcohol I think in a lot of immigrant communities you can see this but within
Hours whether it was through relatives families or things you see on the news alcohol was very per pervasive and so my brother and I coming from more of a public health or you know uh biomedical background you see how alcohol exasperates chronic conditions and individual’s Health but you also see how
Alcohol can disrupt communities and my work in student government at that time was really seeing how that was disrupting Campus Life campus culture actual individuals lives and it became very clear to me that you know we need to address this as a Social and Health problem and there’s really been no
Solution that’s tried to do both and so you know as you know Health Care is more of sick care yeah in America and there are so many reasons why somebody doesn’t go to the doctors I mean even with all of the resources and all of the you know
Help I had there were so many reasons why I didn’t want to go to the doctor I didn’t you know and so you can imagine that on top of just a huge fragmented system and my brother and I you know really saw the Gap where technology can come in and streamline
The care delivery process for so many individuals who are at need and for us it’s always been very purpose– driven and it’s something that whether you know whatever the highs and lows of a business and in starting a company early stage is we know we can come back to understanding that we’re helping
People in real lives can be impacted from this and so that really is what helps ground US during this tumultuous process where I I think that you know we’re still in the becoming work in progress stage of what it is to build um a business that’s awesome um excuse me um
With ethos what is a night out like with ethos when you know when you say it’s a social uh and medical solution uh using your technology you know if I’m going to be out having a night you know drinking um what what does that like look like
When I’m using ethos yeah so essentially you can log and track your drinks using ethos and the way we do it embeds into the social environment where you know you take a photo of your drink it takes a photo of you back and that’s how we log your standard drink there’s so much
Education around you know there there’s so much actual education that gets missed around how much is too much that we’re trying to embed and automate for the individual so that they don’t have to necessarily think about calculating okay how much am I actually drinking we
Do that for them so that they can stay more present in the moment and so with that drink log feature that’s really what we’re trying to accomplish as well as you know beyond using the drink log feature during an actual drinking session after a night out you can use a lot of different
Prompts motivational um reflection tools within the application to figure out hey I experienced a hangover I feel horrible what should I do and we kind of coach that person into being like hey don’t worry about it here are next things here are some things you can do in the future
Based off of you know what your alcohol patterns have been in the past this is how you can improve going forward and so we’re able to really use and take a data-driven approach to alcohol related patterns but in all honesty you know even alcohol isn’t necessarily the root
Problem it’s the mental health triggers and so what we’re trying to accomplish in the before and after stages of drinking is how can you raise that awareness for an individual to start to understand what triggers them to pick pick up a drink what triggers them to
You know take that you know go beyond their limits and we try to detect that so that they don’t necessarily you know they don’t necessarily have the capacity maybe in the moment or even after to figure that out and there’s so much data can do to really read between the lines
And help that individual digest how something a a certain behavior is affecting their health yeah that that’s amazing um work that you guys are doing what are some of the challenges that you guys have faced you know being young entrepreneurs entering in such a like I said it’s it’s something that’s so
Socially accepted but you know it can kill communities it’s a lot of um you know for me like it’s everywhere you turn you know um especially like in you know you’re watching TV or social media someone has a bad day they they take a drink someone celebrates they have a
Drink you have social Drinkers and then you like you talked about it can turn into an addiction yeah and it’s a very wide spectrum from social to you know stress reliever to addiction um what have some of the challenges that you guys have faced you know delivering you
Know your delivering your your product to your to your audience yeah so I think like you just said even when we have conversations with healthc care administrators who we want to partner with they’re like okay this is great but why alcohol they don’t understand how alcohol even is a Hu a big enough
Problem right everyone knows it can be a problem but is it a big enough problem that they want to take action on and I think that just speaks volumes to how underestimated it is until it reaches these certain manifestations like you know a DUI or you know um an individual
Getting hurt or somebody having to deal with ADD addiction we don’t realize it and Healthcare doesn’t realize its cost until it’s one of those three things and so for us it’s really hard to um we found that it’s it’s really frustrating to have to you know make a case for this
To healthc care providers who should already proactively be engaging individuals on this type of education I think also being really young in a industry like healthcare where often times it’s a lot of older people um you know it’s it’s hard to be taken seriously I mean
We just had a call with a really big Health System yesterday and it felt like we just had to almost like like pitch ourselves which you oftentimes have to do in entrepreneurship but it felt like we had to kind of talk about our age where you know you s yourself and your
And it’s like well that’s that shouldn’t be relevant you know but we have to kind of figure out how to be strategically strategic about our communication um and I think that’s been something I also think that just the route of you know working partnership partnering with universities and Health Systems it’s very
Bureaucratic and you can think you have a warm lead and then all of a sudden they drop off and so it’s just a lot of iterating and I think it goes back to having to one be consistent but two be very disciplined with your belief in the
Idea and yourself and this is something that my brother has taught so taught me so much about because he is you know naturally a lot more um you know uh he he’s he takes risks a lot more than I do or he he grew up doing that and I’ve
Learned so much from that but also the way he deals with maybe failure rejection I take it really personally because I I tie or and I’m working on this but I tie what I’m able to do so close to my identity and he’s really taught me like hey you are an individual
Like you’re Kavita and that’s great enough whatever happens with the business there’s so many factors that go into it’s not I’m not the only the one thing that I maybe did or didn’t do isn’t what is going to make or break ethos right it is you know an ecosystem
Of people of thoughts of decisions that go into scaling a business and in the early stages it really is about building the right consistent protocols or the consistent um actions you’re going to do in order to figure it out because there’s lots of iterations that happen yeah and um what
Could you know you talked about scaling up what does scaling up look like for ethos like if you had your perfect world um what is what does ethos look like in you know two years three years five five years and now what does um the the awareness around alcohol and education
Through ethos uh look like in a few years yeah so we want to be in the hands of every college student across the us we want this to be a part of what you have to do when you go to college so you understand whether it’s before you go
Out whether it’s when when you go out how much is too much and we believe our strategy in meeting students where they’re at can actually effectively engage individuals instead of a lot of the current um you know the current practices universities use that students don’t even engage with and when it comes
To Health Systems we want to be able to reach individuals who are at risk of alcohol use disorder substance use disorder and reach them with their primary care doctor before um it gets to that stage of addiction because alcohol is a huge risk factor for variety of different conditions and
Again everything that we’re focused on is prevention we want to see less cases of um alcohol use disorder and we want to see more detection of people with it that’s the first barrier I think to addressing the addiction crisis is not enough people are actually screened for alcohol use disorder one because we
Don’t have those conversations in with our friends so you know we don’t have those conversations with our doctors so where are we having these conversations yeah you know yeah exactly and how many um users do you guys currently have or daily users are you guys uh running through your through your ecosystem
Right now yeah so we launched direct to consumer in January and we ran that through August when we gained over 6,000 active daily active users who still use the platform today um you know we kind of from then pivoted more to a model of working with universities and Health
Systems a B2B SAS model because we realized of the average 6,000 users um or of the 6,000 users the average audit C score which is the alcohol which is the alcohol screening protocol um the average score from 0 to 15 was 6.8 which means individuals were already showing
Early signs of liver damage so we knew we needed to bring this to institutions who can enable more care and that’s really where we pivoted and we hope to um you know gain one a a larger patient population through those two modalities and if and if for our audience that’s
Listening and we wanted to use ethos you know to start drinking responsibly because right we say drink responsibly right we say yeah I’m only going to have two or three drinks and two or three turns into four but based on how you’re feeling your hydration levels whether
You ate that day three drinks or four drinks also depending on the bartender that all affects the way that you feel and having the technology that you know can tell you where you’re at at that point if you decide to continue you have that’s a you know you’re making a choice
Rather than but you’re making an aware choice and I think that’s that’s what what’s very key is giving people the awareness to make the choice to say n I’ve had I’ve had enough so where could people um download and and and get started with using ethos yeah you can
Download the consumer version of our application for free on the App Store ethos mindful drinking and just to your point it really is a companion to help you make conscious decisions regardless of whether you decide to drink you know it’s not an app that’s necessarily just
For going sober it’s for people who want to become conscious and have that companion of understanding hey how can I Pace myself hey you know how how much is too much for me all this information that gets lost um when we’re too busy consuming alcohol yeah well I really
Appreciate uh you stopping by the collab District podcast uh today if you could give one um aspiring um story or advice to you know young entrepreneurs out there that are listening to this um please do so because again there’s a lot of people in this community um that are entrepreneurs
That just maybe not feel like they have the resources or just need to hear or relate to a certain person’s story so it can be U become obtainable to them so is there something aspirational that you can share with us today yeah I think one thing that I have been thinking about
For myself when it comes to the importance of having a growth mindset not just for your business but for yourself because they’re interrelated is is just you you have to believe in yourself if you like if not you then who right and so no matter all the different support
That you can get from friends and family I think working on yourself and being very intentional with what you want to do I realized that it was a gift to be so driven and it was something I inherited from my parents it was something that I was so lucky to learn
And and have the resources to act on but if you’re not intentional you can lead a very purposeless life and not know where you are despite working hard doing the quote unquote right thing and so I’m really at a stage where everything I do has a purpose because I understand how
Important it is to live life that way and um I think that one of the things I had to really unveil was what are my own limitations to a lot of my goals like what self limitations do I have and how can I kind of dispel those and really
Just believe in myself because if not who and I will say also I recently watched Beyonce’s Renaissance film documentary okay and she said something that was like I’m not afraid to be seen trying and I was like if Beyonce’s not afraid to be seen trying who the hell am
I to be afraid and so I think that’s something that’s really resonated with me it’s like I’m going to put myself out there and I’m going to do this I’m going to give it my all and I’m not going to even necessarily care about that outcome
I’m so afraid of right now we’re not there yet right I I’m just going to keep on going right now and enjoying exactly enjoy the process the process well thank you once again for coming by just sharing your journey of resilience and just overcoming and as well as just
Being young and ambitious and being able to hone that in and being um responsible and mature and just living a life of gratitude thank you for coming by sharing your story for our audience we’ll you know check us out on YouTube Spotify apple and all your platforms
This has been another episode of the collab District podcast with Miss kavit thank you
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